Critical analysis of the documentary "Electronic waste: the great diversion" from the program "Le Monde en face" on France 5 of February 19, 2019

As requested by some readers, this is the English version of an article I posted in French earlier this week. The documentary can be seen here: https://www.france.tv/france-5/le-monde-en-face/896857-dechets-electroniques-le-grand-detournement.html

The documentary "Electronic Waste: The Great Diversion" (own translation) broadcast last Tuesday on France 5 once again drew the public's attention to a sad reality of our time: some of the 50 million tonnes of old electrical and electronic equipment that the world's population disposes of every year ends up in Africa's illegal landfills, recycled under appalling conditions by teenagers who poison themselves with this activity while generating pollution on an industrial scale.

This report is now part of a long line of similar stories for more than 15 years*, and it is unfortunately to be feared that the public will still be confronted with the same images in the future as the problem seems insoluble.

It’s a good thing that the France 5 programme contributes to raising public awareness by revealing the other side of the coin of our consumer society, and points to certain dysfunctions in our waste management systems at a time when we talk a lot about the circular economy. However, it is also disturbing because of some messages that are delivered, sometimes based on half-truths, and because of the shortcuts adopted in the narrative.

The purpose of this article is therefore to provide some clarification to help understand the subject in all its complexity.

First, the documentary's narrative suggests that an organized mafia network is pulling the strings of a lucrative illegal trade, which is not accurate. Through rhetoric that multiplies the evocations of "real mafia", "mafia networks" or "traffickers", the report takes on thriller tones suggesting the existence of a Pablo Escobar of electronic waste and massive fraud. The reality is actually much more nuanced.

The report also shows that much of this "traffic" is in fact perfectly legal: there is no crime when electronic waste abandoned on the side of the street is collected, and the documentary even specifies that in most cases the devices are exported "legally" to the second-hand market in Africa, which is confirmed by the Basel Convention lawyer in her intervention.

In reality, only three aspects presented in the report are criminal on the European side:

• the Aubervilliers scrap metal dealer who shreds a computer in a facility that is not adapted to handle this type of waste
• battery and WEEE theft from municipal waste disposal facilities
• the export of real waste - i.e. equipment that will probably never be repaired - such as the refrigerator whose power cord has been cut off or CRT screens so old that they would only have a very short life span anyway.

These crimes are rather leakages and malfunctions in a regulated system designed to properly manage the end of life of our devices, but are far from being the result of a mafia type criminal organisation.

On the African side, the situation is a little more complex, with the recycling sector on landfills such as Agbogbloshie operating largely outside the legal framework by not respecting the environmental and social standards and regulations in force in these countries. But here too, talking about a mafia is inaccurate and excessive, and it is rather the sad reality of informal economies, resulting from some people being pushed towards dangerous subsistence activities by extreme poverty, and the weakness of institutions that are unable to manage environmental problems in many developing countries.

The existence of an electronic waste mafia is therefore more of a myth and a tendency to sensationalize documentaries, and reality actually shows an addition of dysfunctions and offences impacting an imperfect system.

Then, the documentary takes a shortcut by giving the impression that Africa is used as a dump for old European devices, that the teenagers of the Agbogbloshie dump kill themselves by managing the waste of unscrupulous or naive European consumers. This simplification actually omits certain phenomena that are barely addressed in the documentary and yet are essential to understand in order to fully approach the problem:

• The trade in used vehicles, tyres and electrical and electronic equipment destined for Africa is above all driven by a strong demand from a population that wants to have access to the benefits of modernity without having the purchasing power to acquire new equipment. The so-called "traffickers" presented in the report are in reality mostly traders supplying second-hand markets in African cities, recovering, exporting and reselling anything that could have an economic value. The printers from the University Hospital of Groningen were certainly very useful to a Ghanaian hospital, school or company before ending up on the Agbogbloshie landfill.
• The problem comes from the lack of standards and quality control of exported devices. The United Nations University expert interviewed also mentioned the failures of such approaches. And this is where the real weakness of the system lies: the legal framework prohibits the export of waste, but the application of the law is extremely difficult without a precise description of what is waste and what could be a second-hand product, as demonstrated by the painstaking work that the Belgian customs inspector presented in the report must do.
• Another problem is the lack of capacity in developing countries in general to effectively manage this waste stream. Poverty pushes many people to engage in subsistence activities under appalling conditions, in a system that is difficult for governments with weak institutions and limited technical and economic means to manage. The latter are already facing a multitude of other problems to manage, starting with household waste.

In summary, it’s a fact that there is a significant flow of second-hand equipment from Europe to Africa, mainly traded to meet a real demand for economic and social reasons, fuelled largely by a completely legal network (as long as the equipment is not stolen by breaking into waste collection centres), and that the actual problem of informal recycling of WEEE in developing countries results not from a gigantic mafia manipulation as the documentary suggests, but from two aspects that have not been addressed:

• there are no effective quality control mechanisms for devices exported to developing countries, resulting in a significant proportion of these devices rapidly becoming waste
• there are no organised channels to properly manage WEEE in these countries, so the problem would remain unresolved even if only new or quality equipment was sold on their markets.

This distinction is essential if we want to develop appropriate and effective solutions, and above all avoid counterproductive measures. Uganda, the only country in the world to have banned the import of second-hand computers in 2010, has seen access to IT technologies decline due to soaring prices**.

Finally, it is also regrettable that the France 5 documentary does not look at the solutions that have been developed in recent years, and which deserve as much public support as more technical and financial resources:

• the reuse sector, whether for the European or African markets, is rapidly becoming more structured with the emergence of major industrial players, who are developing quality standards and even offering guarantees on second-hand equipment that has been repaired and refurbished.
• there are a multitude of public and private initiatives to assist developing countries in setting up WEEE recycling schemes, which are making real progress***.

Nevertheless, the problem described remains topical and dramatic, and the France 5 documentary, like many previous reports on the subject, has the merit of drawing the general public’s attention to the sad consequences of our modern life and consumer society. However, tackling the problem in all its complexity would also allow to address and support real solutions, rather than focusing on the misdeeds of an imaginary mafia that we would be tempted to fight like a Don Quixote....

* a short selection among the many films and similar reports on the subject made over the past 15 years:

- the many films of the NGO Basel Action Network, one of the first organisations to denounce the problem of WEEE in 2002 https://www.ban.org/watch-films

- "The e-waste tragedy", Greenpeace, 2014 https://greenpeacefilmfestival.org/en/film/la-tragedie-electronique/

- "Toxic waste, deadly legacy", Temps Présent, Télévision Suisse Romande, 2012 https://pages.rts.ch/emissions/temps-present/internation

** Ugandan press articles report problems related to the ban on the import of second-hand computers

- https://pctechmag.com/2011/06/uganda-second-hand-computers-a-cause-for-concern/

- https://www.balancingact-africa.com/news/telecoms_en/20874/ugandas-ban-on-refurbished-computers-sparks-the-law-of-unintended-consequences

- https://dispatch.ug/2011/01/04/why-ban-used-computers/

*** See the following international initiatives:

- the "Sustainable Recycling Industries" project funded by the Swiss government https://www.sustainable-recycling.org/recycling-initiatives/ghana/

- the German GIZ cooperation project https://www.giz.de/en/worldwide/63039.html

- the fund of the German development bank KfW https://accra.diplo.de/gh-en/themen/ewaste-project-launch/1164856

- SGS Renovo program in Ghana https://www.sgs.com/en/news/2018/09/sgs-implements-renovo-program-in-ghana